My name's Joe. I've actually been snowboarding for about 6 years, but I'm still a terrible snowboarder. You see, I never tried to better my snowboarding skills at all, I just did my lessons the first year and went off with my friends in the ski program we have at our school. I've never attempted to hop, go to a terrain park, or even improve my balance, and it shows in the worst way.

I actually feel terrible for the people behind me. I'm bad enough that, when I break, I have to do a full-fledged stop and switch stances to keep my balance. I also have very little control over which direction I go to, and it causes a mess for the people around me, especially on early Friday nights when the place is packed.

Last summer, I made a commitment to myself to lose weight because I let myself become obese, and dropped 50 lbs by November. Now that I am much more physically fit, I took it upon myself to take my sports (Lacrosse, Rugby, and Snowboarding) a bit more seriously - replacing the time I spent playing video games with practice and exercise.

I know very little about snowboarding, a fact I realized from lurking around here. In fact, until yesterday I had no idea what "Camber" or "Rocker" even meant. I mean to change that; if I want to have a sport I should take it more seriously than I do now.

My current setup is a 2008 Burton Clash at 151 cm - given my height/weight I should be around the 156-159 range, but tbh I've never though about it until now. I've also kept the board in pretty poor condition since I lacked the knowledge on how to take proper care of it, and it shows from massive lesions and wax buildup on the base. Once the season's over, I'm going to get a 2013 model on sale for the following year and begin a paradigm-shift in the way I board.

If you guys have and advice for me or want to point me in the right direction, I'd be glad to hear it. I will be coming back more often to hear from the snowboarding world, which I hope to immerse myself in.

I think one or two private or semi-private (no more than 3-4 people in the group) lessons would do wonders for you. From the sounds of it, you may still using the "falling leaf" technique to turning, which if an instructor taught you this, he should be shot. Otherwise, it is a common safety valve for beginners (especially self-taught beginners) to use this approach, but you'll never get better using it.

Now that you have lost some weight (50 lbs, is a lot of weight to lose, congratulations!) you should find snowboarding easier, as you would expect for any physical pursuit. This is because you're not carrying extra weight that is putting added stress on your bones & joints, and fatigue to your muscles.

Don't worry about hopping, jumping, terrain park or any of that. Get a lesson or two and learn or re-learn the basic fundamentals of controlling yourself on a board: j-turns, stopping in a controlled manner, then s-turns, then controlling your speed and linking turns.

When you're comfortable negotiating intermediate terrain, then you can worry about the terrain park and jumps and all that. But first make sure you got the basics under control.

Looking at a youtube video, yes, the falling leaf is pretty much what I do when I go snowboarding. I'm a bit more drastic than some of the videos showing a tutorial on it though - I move along until I'm going very fast, than do a sudden hard break and switch stances to keep my balance. I anger a lot of people this way by getting in front of them and then stopping suddenly

I suppose getting a private lesson would be the best thing to do. Since I have that issue, I'm probably harboring a lot of bad habits that need to be erased in order to improve.

With that said, I suppose I should find ways to take better care of my board before I go out again. Would waxing and sharpening the board be easy enough to do on my own?

Probably bettet and easier to just have someone else do it. Should cost about $25-30 or so. If you ride more than ten days a year you might consider investing in an iron and tuning supplies to take care of your own routine maintenance.

I suppose I should find ways to take better care of my board before I go out again. Would waxing and sharpening the board be easy enough to do on my own?

Have a look through the boards section for maintenance or do a search. Watch the youtube vids and decide if you think you want to do it yourself, or run it by your local board shop or resort tuning place